So Melbourne done. Congratulations to Brawn and Button. A great start to a season when a smaller team starts by winning, so we know the major teams will tend to get better during the season, so good to have a dark horse start off by leading in both championships.
Jensen Button's race was pretty uneventful and he led from pole position and with Barrichello falling back and then still climbing all the way to second place, clearly Brawn was a superior car in Australia. Not much more to say really, about that. Lets examine the fortunes of the three champion drivers.
LUCK OF THE ALONSO
Alonso the two-time champion had a disappointing preseason, the Renault seemed to be faster than the McLaren but not on par with Ferrari, and the cars with the radical diffuser were clearly faster. So Alonso probably thought that this was headed to a rough season. But Alonso had little bits of luck going his way. He started on 9th position but was unlucky in the start midfield crashes and was down to 15th. From there you'd think there is not much to do except finish the race and hope for the best. Melbourne tends to be an endurance race and many cars retire. A point or two were best he could hope for. And annoyingly team mate Piquet was 6 positions ahead of him in 9th place.
At the first safety car roughly speaking half point of the race, Alonso was running 13th and Piquet 7th. A long-shot to get any points from there. And most cars were still in the running. Looked bad for the Spaniard. So then Alonso's luck starts to get better. Piquet loses it at the restart, beaching his car. Alonso starts to move ahead, and is in 11th place at Lap 27. Perhaps a point or two are in the cards after all. But after the second set of pits, and Alonso's was very late, he has only climbed up to 9th place. It looks like he is going to have that worst feeling, to be the first driver not to score a point in this race.
Then we get the late incident with Kubica and Vettel, and we get the second safety car. Alonso is in luck and Alonso is able to finish the race in 6th position, three points. A less-than-impressive finish, but considering he started 9th, the start went badly and he was back to 15th, and at half point of the race was running 11th, to finish 6th is not bad. What is better for Alonso is the luck that befell his three primary rivals if we consider the past season (Hamilton, Raikkonen and Massa). And this was before the reviews and relegations of the aftermath, where in the end, Alonso gains yet another position and is classified 5th with 4 points. Not at all a bad start for the season, all things considering.
LUCK OF THE KLIMSTER
Kimi's luck is not nearly as good. He headed to Melbourne with a car that was considered best of the three front-runner teams (McLaren, Ferrari and Renault). Obviously not as fast as the new diffuser cars, but Kimi is clearly in a faster car than his two primary rivals, Hamilton and Alonso. His qualifying did not go too well, so Kimi starts in 7th place one behind Massa. But Kimi has one lap more fuel than Massa. And knowing Hamilton is starting last on the grid, should also add a bit of a smile to the Ferrari pilot.
Taking advantage of KERS, Kimi is able to jump to 5th but Massa gets up to 3rd. Kimi tries to get up but soon ruins his soft tyres and then struggles to finish the first stint. By mid-race and the safety car, Kimi was still in 5th and Massa still in 3rd. This was not looking like a great race for Finnish champ but at least the McLaren and Renault drivers were behind him.
Kimi's luck seems to change, and its all bad luck from here to Kimi again. He makes his late race mistake - these are becoming alarmingly common for Raikkonen - and throws away a position that was likely to give a 4th or 5th place finish before Kubica-Vettel - and put Kimi on the podium if he had only held his position from mid race. With Massa retiring with 12 laps to go and Kimi retiring a few laps before the end, this meant also no points for Ferrari.
LUCK OF THE LEWIS
If Kimi has bad luck, Lewis has positively miserable luck. Cruel, is how we must consider Hamilton's fortunes. He starts on a very weak car, and in last place 18th on the grid. He drives like a maniac and is up to 10th place by mid race and after the second set of pit stops he is in the points, running in 6th place. Considering that Kimi is out of it and Alonso behind him at this point, Lewis should be quite happy for how he's managed his race.
It then gets even better. With the Kubica-Vettel incident and both out, Lewis is headed to 4th place and 5 points. A very impressive points-haul for a "lost race" and starting from last on the grid, with a non-competitive car. Very impressive indeed.
So then the Toyota Trulli incident after the race. Trulli is first penalized and then - mysteriously - it emerges that McLaren had not been truthful (so they lied) - to get one extra point for Hamilton. WHY? Why not be happy with the 4th place, all their real rivals were far behind. But yes, the worst fate. He is briefly teased with a 3rd place 6 points finish, in the race aftermath, and then it is removed and he has nothing. That must hurt!
LUCK OF THE ROSS
So there is Ross Brawn. Wow. He does know how to design cars, doesn't he. Two championship cars at Benetton, five championship cars at Ferrari and now he has clearly the fastest car for the start of 2009. He is another champion even though Ross Brawn himself doesn't race them.
LUCK OF THE BUTTON
But then there is Jensen. He won fair and square. He now has the fastest car. And even more, he knows from many seasons in the midfield and backfield, how much to cherish this one chance he has. If the Brawn is not disqualified due to its diffuser, and if Button manages to turn this second race into his second win, as his nearest rival seems to be Barrichello, and not quite as fast as Button; and as the four other fast drivers in fast cars - Hamilton, Raikkonen, Alonso and Massa - are in such weak cars at the start of the season, ie losing points to Toyota, BMW and Williams - this is very strongly Button's season to win the championship...
That is why five champs in this blog. If Jensen wins this race today in Malaysia, then he is probably our champion too.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
New Season about to start. First on the top 4 drivers
The best time of the year in F1. The first qualifying is only hours away but being the first race we don't really know who is strong and who not. Everybody has the greatest amount of optimizm about the upcoming season.
So this year we have a new champion (Congrats Lewis) and last season saw four manufacturers regularly contest for wins and also winning - McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and BMW. In the starting season we have three returning champions - Lewis, Kimi and Fernando - who are enticingly each in a car by a different manufacturer, but also all three are in the car (or back in the car) that won them the championship last.
But this season sees the biggest amount of technical regulation changes that the sport hsa seen in more than a decade. I personally don't like the shape of the new car (and am not alone) but tbat will pass. These will soon become familiar to us and the older F1 cars will seem.. old
DRIVERS
First lets look a bit at the top drivers. Three champions and all well into the early parts of their careers. Kimi is 29 years old. Fernando is 27 and Lewis is 24 years of age. These are young drivers. They also have a lot of experience and in particular a lot of success under their belts. Alonso has won two championships, 21 race wins, and earned 551 points out of 123 races entered. Kimi has one championship, 17 wins, 531 points out of 140 races. Hamilton has 1 championship, 9 wins and 207 points out of 35 races. If we toss in Felipe Massa into the mix as the fourth young experienced lion, the 27 year old has no championships but otherwise very comparable stats, 11 wins and 298 points out of 106 races.
Two interesting statistics I would like to mention. The points-per-race average and the winning percentage. Kimi and Fernando are very close on both - with Alonso ahead on both - and very high marks for the two drivers far into a career with over 500 races for both of them. Alonso has been bringing an average of 4.5 points per race over his career and Kimi 3.8 points. Felipe Massa is significantly behind on this measure, averaging 2.7 points per race. As to winning percentage, Massa and Raikkonen are very close, Massa at 10.4% (winning one in ten starts) and Raikkonen winning 12.1% of his races or one in eight starts; but here Alonso is well ahead, winning a very high percentage of 17.1% of his races. That is one win in every six starts.
Compared to the three, Lewis Hamilton has far better stats, but these have been generated in only two years, when the McLaren has been a top car both seasons. That will not be how any F1 race driver will have his whole career, so Lewis's stats may be artificially high because of good luck in being with the right team at the right time. Even so, his stats are most impressive. Lewis has been delivering 5.9 points per race started and his win percentage has been amazing at 25.7%. He has been winning one out of every four starts!
In terms of evenly balanced drivers, these four are now very even in every way, the top 3 have all won a championship and Massa came within a point last year, and headed to the championship up to the last lap of the last race. All have multiple wins in multiple seasons. The two older champions, Kimi and Fernando have won races on two different teams and both wanted away from the other team (funnily enough, McLaren in both cases) and are now with the team where they won their championships. As to Alonso whatever unhappy feelings he had about Renault early last year seemed to vanish once he started to win again for Renault.
Lewis was happy with McLaren all along and is now the youngest champ of all time. And Massa must feel much more confident this season knowing his team mate Kimi can be defeated and that Massa has an even chance within the Ferrari team.
As to Lewis. He became champion last year. This must be a big boost to his young racing mind. He has already achieved it. He is still learning F1 and still learning the circuits, the team, the car. He will still get better simply because he is so young and has so little experience (35 starts).
And a mention of Kimi. He has had a near perfect pairing of seasons, up in one, down in the next. It was all his life at McLaren and now also last season the pattern continued at Ferrari. I would believe that Kimi thinks this is his year again and believes he will be contesting for the championship again this season to the end.
But we have a new season. Ferrari tends to be consistent going from one successful season to the next. Renault tends to have spurts of a couple of short years of success then trouble. They might well be strong this year. But McLaren is notorious for up-and-down years. Very competitive one year, and mid-field the next. A see-saw performance team. They were up last year, this bodes badly for McLaren for 2009.
The big change however are the new regulations. This season will offer the midfield teams - even some backmarkers - the chance to jump up because of new opportunities in the new regulatios. We see it early in the three teams with the new diffuser.
Over time the big teams with big budgets and experience - Ferrari, McLaren (perhaps Renault) and BMW will all be able to force their teams ahead simply by size and effort. But early in these new regulations it is a golden moment for the smaller teams like Williams, Red Bull and even backmarkers like Force India and Brawn.
Very exciting times. Can't wait!
So this year we have a new champion (Congrats Lewis) and last season saw four manufacturers regularly contest for wins and also winning - McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and BMW. In the starting season we have three returning champions - Lewis, Kimi and Fernando - who are enticingly each in a car by a different manufacturer, but also all three are in the car (or back in the car) that won them the championship last.
But this season sees the biggest amount of technical regulation changes that the sport hsa seen in more than a decade. I personally don't like the shape of the new car (and am not alone) but tbat will pass. These will soon become familiar to us and the older F1 cars will seem.. old
DRIVERS
First lets look a bit at the top drivers. Three champions and all well into the early parts of their careers. Kimi is 29 years old. Fernando is 27 and Lewis is 24 years of age. These are young drivers. They also have a lot of experience and in particular a lot of success under their belts. Alonso has won two championships, 21 race wins, and earned 551 points out of 123 races entered. Kimi has one championship, 17 wins, 531 points out of 140 races. Hamilton has 1 championship, 9 wins and 207 points out of 35 races. If we toss in Felipe Massa into the mix as the fourth young experienced lion, the 27 year old has no championships but otherwise very comparable stats, 11 wins and 298 points out of 106 races.
Two interesting statistics I would like to mention. The points-per-race average and the winning percentage. Kimi and Fernando are very close on both - with Alonso ahead on both - and very high marks for the two drivers far into a career with over 500 races for both of them. Alonso has been bringing an average of 4.5 points per race over his career and Kimi 3.8 points. Felipe Massa is significantly behind on this measure, averaging 2.7 points per race. As to winning percentage, Massa and Raikkonen are very close, Massa at 10.4% (winning one in ten starts) and Raikkonen winning 12.1% of his races or one in eight starts; but here Alonso is well ahead, winning a very high percentage of 17.1% of his races. That is one win in every six starts.
Compared to the three, Lewis Hamilton has far better stats, but these have been generated in only two years, when the McLaren has been a top car both seasons. That will not be how any F1 race driver will have his whole career, so Lewis's stats may be artificially high because of good luck in being with the right team at the right time. Even so, his stats are most impressive. Lewis has been delivering 5.9 points per race started and his win percentage has been amazing at 25.7%. He has been winning one out of every four starts!
In terms of evenly balanced drivers, these four are now very even in every way, the top 3 have all won a championship and Massa came within a point last year, and headed to the championship up to the last lap of the last race. All have multiple wins in multiple seasons. The two older champions, Kimi and Fernando have won races on two different teams and both wanted away from the other team (funnily enough, McLaren in both cases) and are now with the team where they won their championships. As to Alonso whatever unhappy feelings he had about Renault early last year seemed to vanish once he started to win again for Renault.
Lewis was happy with McLaren all along and is now the youngest champ of all time. And Massa must feel much more confident this season knowing his team mate Kimi can be defeated and that Massa has an even chance within the Ferrari team.
As to Lewis. He became champion last year. This must be a big boost to his young racing mind. He has already achieved it. He is still learning F1 and still learning the circuits, the team, the car. He will still get better simply because he is so young and has so little experience (35 starts).
And a mention of Kimi. He has had a near perfect pairing of seasons, up in one, down in the next. It was all his life at McLaren and now also last season the pattern continued at Ferrari. I would believe that Kimi thinks this is his year again and believes he will be contesting for the championship again this season to the end.
But we have a new season. Ferrari tends to be consistent going from one successful season to the next. Renault tends to have spurts of a couple of short years of success then trouble. They might well be strong this year. But McLaren is notorious for up-and-down years. Very competitive one year, and mid-field the next. A see-saw performance team. They were up last year, this bodes badly for McLaren for 2009.
The big change however are the new regulations. This season will offer the midfield teams - even some backmarkers - the chance to jump up because of new opportunities in the new regulatios. We see it early in the three teams with the new diffuser.
Over time the big teams with big budgets and experience - Ferrari, McLaren (perhaps Renault) and BMW will all be able to force their teams ahead simply by size and effort. But early in these new regulations it is a golden moment for the smaller teams like Williams, Red Bull and even backmarkers like Force India and Brawn.
Very exciting times. Can't wait!
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